This record is a letter sent to the Governor-General in 1971, with handwritten notes showing the opinions of different government officials. They are discussing their views on whether Neville Bonner should be publicly recognised as the first Aboriginal person to serve in the Australian Parliament.

Neville Bonner was an elder of the Jagera people. He entered the Australian Parliament in the year 1971, when he was appointed by the Queensland Parliament to fill a casual vacancy in the Senate. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people had gained the right to vote in federal elections and sit in federal Parliament only nine years earlier, in 1962.

For his swearing-in at Government House, Canberra, officials decided not to mention that Neville Bonner had made history as the first Aboriginal federal parliamentarian in Australia. As can be seen in the record, it was decided that the best way to honour him was to treat him the same as any other Senator, 'rather than as an oddity’.

It's not clear from the record whether any of the officials involved in the conversation asked Neville Bonner how he would like to be recognised.

Although it was decided to not mention Bonner's race at the swearing-in ceremony, Bonner himself made reference to his identity as an Aboriginal man in the first speech that he gave in the Senate chamber.

In this speech, Neville Bonner said –

For more than 20,000 years my people have loved this country. They have appreciated its beauty and its capacity to provide for human needs. Throughout that long period my race developed many traditions and one generation has passed on to another a respect for these traditions. Traditions are preserved and honoured in the Australian Parliament also.

[…] As an Australian, I am concerned for the future of my country, for the welfare of its people, and for the quality of life that they enjoy. However, I am conscious of the fact that I am the first member of my race to participate in parliamentary proceedings. I am proud that, however long it has taken, this form of participation has been achieved.

Neville Bonner went on to represent Queensland in the Australian Senate for 12 years. Today an official portrait hangs in Parliament House to honour him as the first Aboriginal Senator in Australia. It hangs alongside portraits of other First Nations parliamentarians, including Ken Wyatt, the first Indigenous person to be elected to the House of Representatives in 2010, Nova Peris, the first Indigenous woman to be elected to the Senate in 2013, and Linda Burney, the first Indigenous woman to be elected to the House of Representatives in 2016.